68 Tex. 370 | Tex. | 1887
This suit was by Hrs. Davidson, against the appellant, and her original petition alleged substantially as follows: The appellant, on the twenty-sixth of June, 1883, was the owner of a railroad from Fort Worth to Colorado City, and was engaged in running cars on the same and transporting passengers for hire as a common carrier; that on that day she arrived at Fort Worth from San Antonio on her way to Colorado
An amended petition alleged substantially the same cause of action, but set out the facts of the case more fully. It alleged that the plaintiff was promised ten minutes of time to check her baggage at Fort Worth, but before the time expired she was instructed by an agent of the company to get on the train, and the agent was assisting her to do so when she received the fall and injury complained of, by reason of the gross negligence of appellant’s agents and servants. She alleged that her head, shoulder and spine were seriously wounded; that her ability to attend to her household duties had been seriously impaired; her physical constitution enfeebled; that she had been rendered more liable to disease; that her ability to resist disease had been permanently impaired; and that she had suffered, and continued to suffer, great physical pain and mental distress. For these she claimed to the amount of .ten thousand dollars damages, and five hundred dollars for medical bill. The company filed a general demurrer, and specially set up that so much of the petition as alleged injuries to the plaintiff’s head, shoulder and spine, and the mental distress resulting therefrom, was a departure from the special injury alleged in the original petition, and was barred by the statute of limitations, the said injuries having occurred more than one year before the filing of the amended petition. “ Hot guilty” was also pleaded, and contributory negligence on the
It is complained that the court erred in overruling the special exception settingup the statute of limitations. This question was thoroughly considered and decided in accordance with the views of the district judge in the case of International & Great Northern Railroad Company v. Irvine, 64 Texas, 533. In that case there was a much greater departure in the amended petition from the allegations in the original petition as to the injuries received, than in the present. This court, however, said: “The cause of action was the injury resulting from the alleged negligence of the defendant, time, place and circumstances of which were stated in the original petition, and the amendment did nothing more than to state more fully than did the original the several results of the injury. The court, therefore, did not err in overruling exceptions which presented the statute of limitation as a defense.”
The decision is decisive of the question in the present case.
It is also complained that the court erred in laying too much stress in its charge upon the ten minutes time alleged to have been given by the conductor to the plaintiff in" which to get her baggage checked. The court had explained to the jury the case made by the plaintiff’s petition in which was an allegation that the conductor at Fort Worth promised her to hold the train ten minutes to allow her time to check her baggage. It then proceeded to state to the jury that if those averments, restating them and including the averment as to the ten minutes, were true, they should find for the plaintiff unless her own negligence contributed to the. injury. Ro more prominence was given to the conductor’s promise than to any other fact averred in the petition. Indeed, it was of disadvantage to the plaintiff that her case was made to turn upon a promise to hold the cars for any specified period of time, when she was entitled to recover if the time promised had been less or more, provided she conducted herself as a prudent passenger should have done und„-r the circumstances. We see no objection to the charge on this account.
It is assigned as error that the court charged the jury that the burden of proof of contributory negligence on the part of the plaintiff was upon the defendant. It is not denied that this is correct as an abstract principle, but it is said that the plaintiff’s
According to the plaintiff’s evidence, the person giving this order had the appearance of being a brakeman, which was sufficient to influence the conduct of the plaintiff; and it turned out upon the trial that this person, who, the plaintiff’s witness said, gave the order, was actually a brakeman upon the train at the time.
During the trial the plaintiff offered her own depositions in evidence. Interrogatories fourth, fifth and sixth and the answers to them were ruled out by the court. The seventh interrogatory and answer were then objected to because the interrogatory was leading, and because it assumed that the witness had already stated certain facts, which facts had been contained in her answers that had been suppressed. The first objection is not insisted on in this court. Whether the other would be good or not it is unnecessary for us to decide, as the facts drawn out of the witness in answer to the seventh interrogatory were abundantly proved by other testimony, and as to these there was no conflict in the evidence. Three other witnesses testified to substantially the same facts, and one of them, Doctor Graves, who was her attending physician, gave evidence to greater injuries than those stated in the appellee’s answer to the admitted interrogatory.
The witnesses for the appellee proved her case substantially as it was set forth in her petition. A different state of facts was made out by the defendant’s witnesses. We can not perceive that the evidence preponderates in the least in favor of the de
There is no error in the judgment, and' it is affirmed.
Affirmed.